Features

Jazz-listening bars have been popping up across New York City and many other U.S. cities seeking to replicate Japan’s jazz kissa culture, where listening is sacred and talking is verboten. Our resident jazz fanatic Ken Micallef recently commenced a semi-regular gig as a jazz DJ at Tokyo Record Bar in New York City, and here’s his firsthand report on how he got ready for it, how he tweaked their in-house system, and how the gig is going. . .

Back in 1998 KOCH licensed both the RCA and Arista Kinks catalogs from BMG. Ray Davies supervised and approved the transfer from two-track analog masters, which was accomplished using an Ampex ATR102 directly feeding a Pacific Microsonics Model One A/D converter running at 88.2k/24 bit PCM (bonus tracks were sourced from Ray's DAT tapes). The files were sent to Bob Ludwig's Gateway Mastering for final mastering, including HDCD encoding.

Herb Belkin was one of a kind. A lifetime record executive who was instrumental in taking a onetime field-recording audio company known as Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (a.k.a. MFSL) to the next, audiophile-grade level in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Belkin (1939-2001) also amassed quite the robust collection of vinyl, CDs, LDs, and other music-related memorabilia over the course of his rich life. A good amount of Belkin’s personal archive from the MFSL universe (and beyond!) is coming up for auction at 11 a.m. EDT on June 29, 2025, through Thomaston Place Auction Galleries on Day 3 of their Summer Splendor auction series. Read Mike Mettler and Mark Smotroff’s combo report to see what rare items from Belkin’s vinyl collection are going up for this auction — and also find out what gear he listened to all of it on back in the day. . .